Anne Begg's Week

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Whilst us lucky students have been busily "working" towards the end of term this week Aberdeen South MP Anne Begg has been having another busy week down in Westminster.

Week beginning 15th Dec- A week dominated by Chairing.

As a member of the Speaker's panel of Chairmen I regularly have to Chair committees of the House or debates in Westminster Hall, which acts as a Second Chamber. On Monday and Tuesday this week I chaired 2 Statutory Instrument committees, one about the rescue package for banks and another on amendments to Child Benefit.

However, the highlight of my week was the first meeting in my new role as Vice Chair of the newly formed Speaker's Conference on Tuesday. Speaker's Conferences are extremely rare, there have only been 5 in the history of parliament, and are established to look at a specific aspect of electoral law. This Conference is predominately tasked with looking at the under representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in the House of Commons. Previous conferences have proposed such important developments as votes for women (1916) and the reduction of the voting age to 18 (1965).

The first meeting was an informal private one so we could hear from some academics about the issues under consideration. As Vice-Chair I will be Chairing most of the business meetings - the first public one will be on 20th January 2009. It is a real honour to be asked to do this and I feel privileged that I can play a part in such an important discussion.

My intervention in the Chamber this week was also on Tuesday during Health Questions. While most aspects of health are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, there are still some aspects which aren't, such as the regulation of prescription drugs. You can see my question here.

Select Committee on Wednesday was a one off evidence session on the work of the Pension, Disability and Carers Service. I was able to ask some questions about the workings of Disability Living Allowance. This is where my work in Parliament and my constituency work can cross, as the questions I asked were prompted by real life examples I have come across from my contact with constituents.

The government has also just produced its response to the Select Committee’s report into Carers, which we published in the summer. It was more positive than some government responses have been in the past, so hopefully some of the recommendations we made will be adopted.

I flew back to Aberdeen on Thursday as I was invited to judge the Young Philanthropists Initiative at Torry Academy. This year’s winners were a group of pupils who were promoting a local charity, Befriend a Child, a befriending service for deprived and vulnerable children in Aberdeen.

Office to close for 2 weeks for Christmas on Friday evening, the only time the office is closed all year, so it is a mad rush to get as much as possible cleared. Never mind though, the mail will still be delivered to my house over the holiday period and the e-mails will doubtless pour in as usual.


I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers the very best for the festive season.

I would like to draw your attention to one paragraph in particular:

However, the highlight of my week was the first meeting in my new role as Vice Chair of the newly formed Speaker's Conference on Tuesday. Speaker's Conferences are extremely rare, there have only been 5 in the history of parliament, and are established to look at a specific aspect of electoral law. This Conference is predominately tasked with looking at the under representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in the House of Commons.

I think the one of the best ways to secure equality in society is to ensure equality in the legislative bodies that determine society's rules. I don't know the breakdown of other demographics but from the official Parliament Homepage the number of female MPs is 125 (94 of those being Labour!) out of a total of 646. The tories only have 17 out of their close to 200 and the SNP have no female MPs in their delegation of 7. These statistics are completely unacceptable and I'm glad to see that action is being taken to tackle this non-representation of women in the House of Commons.

To finish off I'd like to echo Anne's Christmas greetings to all reading this, and to the students i hope you enjoy your Christmas break and get lots of revision done.